Four Years with the Kingston Wheelers

Thorsten Klassen has spent four years with the club but he's now returning to his native Germany. Here he looks back at his time with the club. We wish him a good return and say thanks for all the results he brought to the club thanks to his awesome sprint and his cyclo-cross activities. He won't mention it but he was a member of the German national cyclo-cross squad.

After four great years with the Kingston Wheelers it is time to say good bye. As some of you might know my bank was bought by another bank which will shrink the London operations by 50%-60% which has nothing to do with the credit crunch but with their business model. However using some of my contacts in the new bank I was offered a new and very interesting position in their group. So we will not return to Frankfurt but to Hamburg. Yeah the city where ages ago some long haired chaps from Liverpool started a bit of a career in music (If you are under 30 and/or not interested in music, ask your club president...). Hamburg is a very nice city with lots of things to do. They have a covered cycling track and some good cycling clubs. Certainly some good clubs who have a strong support of youth cycling which might be an opportunity for Cedric. I myself am not to sure if I would want to re-join competitive cycling again because of several cases of doping in the Veterans category in Germany (why should in destroy my body for a doubtful eighth place in a crit race in the middle of nowhere?).

When I joined the Kingston Wheelers in January 2005 I was a bit uncertain if I would want to race again. Having been quite successful a long time ago and having done only very few race with no real results the years before my come back was rather unlikely. However the nice atmosphere in the Kingston Wheelers Club (wow, a club night without talking about cycling, thanks to Derek and Ian – I was impressed) and I really enjoyed my first club run in misty conditions through single track lanes of the North Downs. I was impressed again, such nice cycling so close to London. So with this positive mood I tried racing again and upgraded without really knowing from fourth category to third and some month later, a bit more conscious, to second category.

All of a sudden racing was fun again. One big reason was that the Kingston Wheelers never put any pressure on me just enjoying the results: were it the Surrey League races or some rather remote locations like Darley Moore, Warwick town center race or assorted crit race back in Germany or were in cyclo cross...

Additionally my kids started racing in late 2005. Cedric aquired a bit of fame in the South East region, e.g. in a London Cyclo Cross League race last winter the cheer “Go ahead, father of Cedric” reached my ear. Hmm, time to retire?

Below are some photos, click on them to enlarge the image. Note that Cedric won a total of 52 races with another 30 visits on the podium, whilst I won four races with another 10 podiums and further 55 top-10 placings.